eration.

But if George Hotspur would renounce his cousin utterly,--putting
his renunciation on paper,--Sir Harry would pay all his debts to the
extent of twenty thousand pounds, would allow him four hundred a year
on condition that he would live out of England, and would leave him a
further sum of twenty thousand pounds by his will, on condition that
no renewed cause of offence were given.

"You had better, perhaps, go home and think about it, Mr. Hotspur,"
said the lawyer. Cousin George did go away and think about it.

CHAPTER XIII.

"I WILL NOT DESERT HIM."

Sir Harry, before he had left Humblethwaite for London in October,
had heard enough of his cousin's sins to make him sure that the
match must be opposed with all his authority. Indeed he had so felt
from the first moment in which George had begun to tell him of
what had occurred at Airey Force. He had never thought that George
Hotspur would make a fitting husband for his daughter. But, without
so thinking, he had allowed his mind to dwell upon the outside
advantages of the connection, dreaming of a fitness which he knew did
not exist, till he had vacillated, and the evil thing had come upon
him. When the danger was so close upon him to make him see what it
was, to force him to feel what would be the misery threatened to his
daughter, to teach him to realize his own duty, he condemned himself
bitterly for his own weakness. Could any duty which he owed to the
world be so high or so holy as that which was due from him to his
child? He almost hated his name and title and position as he thought
of the evil that he had already done. Had his cousin George been in
no close succession to the title, would he have admitted a man of
whom he knew so much ill, and of whom he had never heard any good,
within his park palings? And then he could not but acknowledge to
himself that by asking such a one to his house,--a man such as this
young cousin who was known to be the heir to the title,--he had given
his daughter special reason to suppose that she might regard him as
a fitting suitor for her hand. She of course had known,--had felt as
keenly as he had felt, for was she not a Hotspur?--that she would be
true to her family by combining her property and the title, and that
by yielding to such a marriage she would be doing a family duty,
unless there were reasons against it stronger than those connected
with his name. But as to those other reasons, must not her fathe